Satisfactory Comics #7

Title: Satisfactory Comics
Issue: #7
Date: May 2007
Publisher: Satisfactory Comics
Writer: Isaac Cates, Mike Wenthe
Artist: Isaac Cates, Mike Wenthe

Seventeen stories make up this 32-page minicomic, and most of them were created in a 30-hour span (with a break for an Elvis Costello concert!). They are also mostly based on "seed" sentences submitted to the creators.

There are a lot of quirky stories here with twist endings, and some pretty funny humor pieces, as well as some comics that truly qualify as experimental.

Among my favorites were "Commuted Sentences", which illustrated altered versions of famous opening lines from literature, and "The Graveyard of Forking Paths", which featured 40 panels in an 8X5 grid with diverging pathways of stories that arrived at multiple endings.

Also in this volume, you'll find a charming tale of the friendship between a girl and a garden ghost, the story of a minor protocol demon, a genetically-engineered kelp harvester seeking inner peace, and a story about necrotizing fasciitis in rhyming verse.

Let me repeat that: This comic has a story about necrotizing fasciitis in rhyming verse. That alone is worth the cover price!

I was also really impressed by one of the more serious pieces here, a mountain climbing parable called The Ascent.

Some of the stories do end a bit abruptly, as might be expected given the constraints the creators put on their work, but this book still delivers a very satisfying collection of quirky vignettes that will definitely make the reader think.

Rating: 8/10